


A Small Sample Of Anniversaries

by thoughtlesslyTruthful



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C (Homestuck), F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29721525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtlesslyTruthful/pseuds/thoughtlesslyTruthful
Summary: 'You have no idea what you are doing' is a sentence which can be applied to you on as broad or as narrow a scope as one wishes, depending on whether one is hoping to incite a more existential or practical sort of dread in you. It may, in fact, be the single most apt sentence spoken about you since you were forged out of some green slime in a tank.This is a selection of several anniversaries set throughout Rose Lalonde and Kanaya Maryam's everlasting marriage.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	A Small Sample Of Anniversaries

** There's a memory that loops over in your mind whenever you find yourself at a loss: you're a little girl sitting on the floor in your mother's living room. Surrounded by a truly excessive wealth of toys — most of them themed for magic; most of them pink — you accidentally spell out the word 'cat' in alphabet blocks. Your mother gasps between sips of gin and vermouth when she finally notices what you've done. She proudly declares you the brightest girl in the world, scooping you up into her arms and peppering you with kisses. She meant everything to you, then. She was your whole world. You don't know if children so young are normally capable of pride, but then you always were a precocious girl. It felt incredible to earn the affections of the most important person in your life. To be the brightest girl in the world. To have a vivid imagination. Have flashes of inspiration. Be an aspiring luminary. Be brilliant. **

**This memory leaves a taste in your mouth more bitter even than the driest of martinis. As that old Gadfly of Athens is said to have once more-or-less remarked, if such a man ever existed outside the fanfiction of his alleged protégés: one only ever knows enough to realize they know nothing. Alas, in the fullness of time you have grown even more brilliant than your mother would have dared to dream. Supernaturally so, in fact, and in so doing you have come to realize that the brightest lights tend to cast the farthest shadows. The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. The smarter you get, the dumber you feel.**

**'You have no idea what you are doing' is a sentence which can be applied to you on as broad or as narrow a scope as one wishes, depending on whether one is hoping to incite a more existential or practical sort of dread in you. It may, in fact, be the single most apt sentence spoken about you since you were forged out of some green slime in a tank. On a very broad level, you have no idea what you're doing with your life. Some of your friend occupy themselves with entrepreneurship, others with altruism, and still others tinker away the hours in a workshop, but it all feels a little hollow to you. You still write from time to time, of course. You enjoy it, but it's not your calling. Not in this timeline, anyways. Another you already lived that life; you don't want to spend yours competing with her.**

**It's a topic you danced around once, awkwardly shuffling past giving it due thought upon your first meeting with the woman who would have been your mother. ' What is there even to consider doing with godhood BUT concern oneself with evildoers?' You'd asked, and perhaps you even meant it at the time. This sort of heroism became less appealing the more you thought about it, however. For one thing, Earth C lacked the sort of villainy which literal divine intervention might be required to address. **

**Oh sure, you'd briefly discussed establishing a sort of dystopian Minority Report system of seerly omniscient justice with Terezi, but you both agreed that such a thing sounded incredibly tiresome to maintain. You're a divine conduit for very concept of learning and knowing, she can parse the vortices of thought and swings a mean cane-sword. Together, you talk about fighting crime and then don't, then one of you leaves the universe to find her moirail. As heroic duo pitches go, it lacks a certain dynamicity. Besides, it strikes you as unnecessarily cruel to court a heroic death while you have a wife at home.**

**Speaking of which, you also have no idea what you're doing on a very granular level. You're presently standing in your kitchen wearing an apron with ' aprom' written across it over President Obama's badly pixilated face: a wedding gift you'd never worn before today. The pixels jab at your neck a little, but certain discomforts are the price you pay to engage in largely pointless irony. Who is the joke for? Yourself, you guess. When Kanaya isn't present, you find most of your humor is for yourself. **

**You're reading through the recipe cards gifted to you on the same day as the apron — another thing you'd literally never used until just now — and making a piss-poor attempt to shoehorn your own blood into the recipe of some icing meant for a cake you're definitely burning. Why don't you just turn off the oven? Because you turned it up really high to start and then forgot to turn it down, and now the inside isn't cooked enough. You need to see this burning through so you can at least claim the inside tastes good. Also, the icing is too thin with the blood in it; which one of these ingredients is meant to thicken it? And now you're having a vision about a carapacian man six hundred miles away buying a carton of milk past its expiration date a month from now. You wish you could complain that you have no idea what the fuck this means, but you know exactly what everything means. It leaves you little room to complain, even when you really want to.**

**Your name is Rose Lalonde, and this is your first anniversary.**

**You barely even notice Kanaya is home early. The door clicks shut, but you're too lost in a state between existential angst, domestic panic, and supernatural fugue to notice. You blink when you hear her key ring clatter into the horn of that ceramic wiggler she keeps by the door. The horns on it are too sharp, and she's going to cut herself on it tomorrow. That's fine, because it will remind her to pick up bandages you'll want on hand in two years. You're tempted to warn her about it anyways, but then she would purchase the wrong brand of bandage and they would fall off at a critical juncture. You can't see who it is who'll need them, but it's neither you nor your wife.**

**KANAYA: What Is On Fire  
KANAYA: Why Are You Wearing That Fake Cooking Bib  
KANAYA: What Am I Looking At Right Now  
** **ROSE: In order? A great many things are on fire throughout the world, so I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific. I'm wearing this very real cooking bib because I'm cooking, or more specifically baking, and this struck me as the appropriate attire. You appear to be looking at former President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, rendered in the sort of physically manifested jpeg artifacts one can only procure using alchemy. If I am to judge based on the furrowing of your brow, you don't care for him. Is it because he's black? I admit, this isn't how I wanted to learn about your hitherto unspoken racial biases.**

** She leans down to kiss your cheek from behind as you speak, wrapping her arms around you as she does so. The world doesn't stop while you're in her arms — the cake is still burning in spite of your prescience, you're still drifting through life unsure of yourself, and some poor girl on the other side of the world loses her mother to cancer in seven years only to become the doctor who cures it — but none of that matters. You can't say Kanaya makes it all go away, but she makes it scare you less. She brings you back to reality. It's where you need to be if you're going to enjoy the hug. If she knew what it meant to you, just to feel her and enjoy her scent a few seconds more, she probably wouldn't break the hug off to go water the flowers on the kitchen table.  **

**You think about telling her, but don't. Swallowing your pride is a lesson you hope one day to learn.**

**KANAYA: Alright Well First Of All The Obama Human Is Clearly Brown  
KANAYA: Ive Never Understood Why Humans Use Colors Like Black Or White To Denote Their Skins Color When They Are Blatantly Inaccurate  
KANAYA: Dersites Are Black There Are No Black Humans  
** **ROSE: The racism doesn't stop from getting taller.  
** **KANAYA: Second Of All  
KANAYA: And I Admit This Probably Should Have Warranted Being First Of All But I Found Myself Distracted By Your Confusing Accusation  
KANAYA: I Would Like To Know What Smells Like It Is On Fire In Our Kitchen  
** **ROSE: Cake.  
** **KANAYA: Cake  
** **ROSE: Mm.**

**You've made the mistake of being curt, and so Kanaya is immediately aware that something is wrong. It's not hard for her to put together what happened: you're wearing an apron and there's a burning cake in the oven. She still seems briefly confused, but it doesn't stop a warm, patient smile from pulling at the corners of her mouth. Her fangs gleam in the evening sun through the kitchen window, and your heart skips a beat. It makes the shame reddening your cheeks less of a big deal. Now you're in her arms again, and she's laughing in a way that makes you feel foolish without feeling judged.**

**KANAYA: Im Touched That You Would Attempt To Make Me A Cake For Our Human Anniversary  
KANAYA: And I Say Human Anniversary Because Im Fairly Certain You Once Told Me That Earth C Does Not Complete A Full Orbit Around The Sun Its Presently Associated With In Three Hundred And Sixty Five Days  
KANAYA: But Humans Still Use That Number Of Days To Track Years Anyways For Historical Reasons  
KANAYA: Which Is Fair Enough I Suppose Since Trolls Still Use The Imperial Alternian Calendar Even Though Its Wildly Inappropriate For Our Current Solar Location  
KANAYA: And You Are Making This Cake Using What Appears To Be Your Own Blood Which Raises A Myriad Of Questions On Top Of The Significant Number Of Which I Was Already In Possession  
KANAYA: But You Seem Alright Physically So I Assume You Have Not Seriously Wounded Yourself In An Effort To Provide Flavoring For A Dessert  
** **ROSE: Kanaya.  
** **KANAYA: Right.  
KANAYA: The Point Is I Love You  
KANAYA: I Am Thankful For You And I Love You  
KANAYA: And I Understand That You Become Upset When You Are Trying To Do Something And You Are Not Incredible At It Right Away  
KANAYA: Because You Are A Talented And Beautiful Woman Who Is Used To Doing Everything Well Immediately As A Result Of Your Intelligence**

** Were you the sort of person who cried during emotional displays, this might have tears pricking the corners of your eyes. When you were a little girl, you used to be proud that you didn't cry. It was indicative of a rational mind, you told yourself. It made you cool. Collected. Mature. You were perfectly capable of feeling empathy for the people who cried in books or in movies — presuming they were well written or acted, respectively — but on some level you still considered them your emotional inferior. Even upon the loss of your precious Jaspers, your sadness manifested as a series of disturbing childhood drawings and a handful of poorly worded poems. **

**Then you saw your mother dead in a crumpled, bloody heap, murdered out of boredom by a psychopath with more power than he knew what to do with. In the moment, you'd convinced yourself that you were too angry to be sad — that the tears would come after you'd taken your revenge. They didn't. Not after you came back to life, not after ascending to godhood, and not after finding your way to the meteor where you'd spend the next three years. For months afterward you would wait for the shock to wear off, assuming the floodgates were due to open any day now.**

**They never did.**

**Since then you've come to terms with the fact that you simply don't cry. It doesn't make you a heartless person; you're not cold or cruel, and you don't feel any less joy or pain than anyone else. Not as far as you can tell, anyways. You're not the Seer of Heart. Still, you feel robbed of a certain release you understand comes with a good sob. You've been forced to find other means of expression.**

**ROSE: I love you, too.**

** This isn't as difficult for you to say as it used to be, but neither is it effortless. To open your heart to another, even Kanaya, exhibits the sort of vulnerability you spent much of your life trying to hide. Hide from whom? From yourself, primarily. To admit vulnerability would be to admit to all of the damage your mother's negligence had done, and even for all the passive-aggression you offered her, you were unwilling to lay such an accusation at her feet with all sincerity. Especially once she was dead. You couldn't do that to her — not even in the privacy of your thoughts. **

**You smile in response to her compliments. It's a smile you keep in reserve almost exclusively for your wife, only rarely offering it to anyone else. It is a smile bereft of the snark or self-satisfaction with which you are commonly associated. There is no sarcasm, irony, or even good humor in the curve of your lips. There is only the thanks and appreciation that comes with being wholly and utterly relieved that the recipient is in your life. As tempted as you are to launch into an epic poem dedicated to returning Kanaya's kind words a hundredfold, you've long since learned that such an act tends to be interpreted as an absurd deflection. It also minimizes her own efforts, and loving your wife is not a fucking competition.**

**ROSE: While there's a remote possibility that this cake won't be worthy of the Crockerbert legacy from which the recipe stems, I intend to see the burning through all the same. It's important to learn from one's mistakes.  
ROSE: Besides, I'm not exactly a cakeologist over here. Maybe this is what cakes smell like before they become delicious.  
ROSE: I'm not about to leap to that sort of unfounded conclusion regarding a subject with which I have little familiarity, Kanaya. Perhaps you're unwilling to say the same?  
** **KANAYA: I Dont Think Its Especially Controversial To Believe That Things Which Smell Like They Are Burning Are Probably Burning  
KANAYA: But So Long As You Are Willing To Commit To Cleaning Out The Oven I Am Not Going To Stop You From Maintaining Your Current Fiery Course** **  
** **KANAYA: Also Im Fairly Certain Cakeology Is Not A Real Domain Of Scientific Expertise  
** **ROSE: No? Has mainstream science been so unwilling to challenge their preconceived notions about cake that we don't even have a branch of academia dedicated to its study? For shame! Perhaps I'll be the first, if that's the case. Somebody has got to break out the proverbial microscope on cake, and if nobody else is going to then I'll need to take up the mantle.  
** **KANAYA: Just So I Understand Correctly  
KANAYA: In This Intellectual Trailblazing Scenario You Would Be Taking Up A Mantle Which You Yourself Created  
KANAYA: And Also The Mantle Is Not Really A Mantle Its A Microscope  
KANAYA: But The Microscope Is Itself Proverbial  
KANAYA: Is That Right  
** **ROSE: Yes.  
** **KANAYA: Well Why Bow To The Conventional Hard Sciences  
KANAYA: Perhaps Cakeology Ought To Be A Social Science  
KANAYA: You Can Put Cake On The Proverbial Couch  
KANAYA: Which Is Something People Say When They Talk About Undergoing Therapy Even Though I Dont Think The Popular Human Image Of A Person Lying On A Couch And Speaking To A Medical Professional Without Looking At Them Is Actually Something Commonly Practiced  
KANAYA: Also A Therapy Session Is Not Really How Social Scientific Experiments Are Carried Out Regardless  
KANAYA: But It Sounds Better Than Putting Cake In A Brief Survey Of Its Preferences And Opinions On A Scale Of One To Four**

** While you'd like to say something suitably witty and nonsensical in order to see just how far the two of you can take a discussion about the scientific merits of pastry research, you open your mouth to reply only to find you've already locked your lips onto hers. There's passion in your movements. Eager. Desperate. It's kind of ridiculous how hard you're kissing her given the conversation that prompted it, but it's moments like this which really drive home just how in love with this woman you are. **


End file.
